There's something about this time of year that inspires me to spend full weekends trying new recipes, snuggled up in my apartment. This ambitious, yet simple, project to make hand-pulled cotton candy, also known as dragon's beard, is next on my list!

This hand-pulled cotton candy is a traditional Chinese treat known as dragon's beard. Also present in Turkey and Pakistan (known as pişmaniye and pashmak, respectively), these bundles of cotton candy strands look like something you shouldn't be able to make by hand. The process involves melting sugar, allowing it to harden, and then stretching it over and over until the strands become as fine as thread.

Once stretched, nuts or chocolate are nestled in bunches of the sugar strands. This looks like a fun Saturday afternoon project to try out with the culinary overachievers in your life. Watch the video below, courtesy of The French Culinary Institute's blog Cooking Issues, and give it a try!